Quote:As literally every sci-fi movie has predicted, we’re becoming increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence. AI can already compose music, play Ms. Pac-Man—like a pro, nonetheless—and even manage a hotel. But it’s never been used solely for the purpose of naming small, fluffy guinea pigs—until now.

Earlier this week, research scientist Janelle Shane got a fantastically unusual request from the Portland Guinea Pig Rescue, asking if she could build a neural network for guinea pig names. The rescue facility needs to generate a large number of names quickly, as they frequently take in animals from hoarding situations. Portland Guinea Pig Rescue gave Shane a list of classic names, like “Snickers” or “Pumpkin,” in addition to just about every other name they could find on the internet. The rest is history.

“I used Andrej Karpathy’s char-rnn, an open-source neural network framework for torch (written in Lua),” Shane told Gizmodo. “I gave the neural network the list of 600+ guinea pig names that the Portland Guinea Pig Rescue assembled for me, and let it train itself to produce more names like the ones on its list. It gradually formed its own internal rules about which letters and letter combinations are the most quintessentially guinea pig.”

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